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LINK: tinyurl.com/oldgaySF

I'd like to share with y'all a project I've poured my heart and soul into over the last couple of years: a database cataloguing every single older queer science fiction book I've managed to track down, consisting of just over 200 titles with LGBT characters/themes & by LGBT authors, spanning over a century (1880-2000) 🚀

The database can be filtered by representation, subgenre, whether the book is currently in print, and more; additionally, it includes my own ratings & brief thoughts on the ones i have read, if anyone needs a suggestion on places to start! (or feel free to shoot me an ask for a more personalized recommendation)

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The New Avengers - Swimsuit Special - (2025)

My tribute to the iconic Marvel Swimsuit Special from the 90s, featuring The Thunderbolts The New Avengers Z, Yelena, Bucky, Alpine, Alexei, John, Ava and Bob 🥳

UPDATED POST: I added Antonia Dreykov and a new Alexei version where he's sporting his tattoos. Enjoy 💗

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I'm going to update my "The New Avengers - Swimsuit Special" soon 💗

Hi ^^

Thank you so much for the great feedback about my Swimsuit Special here and on Twitter, you guys rock.

However, I'm going to update a couple of things:

Someone pointed out that I forgot to draw Alexei's tattoos (BooooOOOOOuh! 😝) so I'll update the artwork in the post by a new version. I'll try to be as close as what you can see in the MCU when it comes to Alexei's tattoos but I had to improvise on some parts of his body, particularly his legs. Preview:

2. I didn't draw her because I didn't consider her a member of The New Avengers but people on Twitter kept on asking for Antonia (Taskmaster) so I'll add her to the series at the same time as Alexei new version. Here's a preview (that is still a work in progress) :

I hope to post everything next week, hopefully on Tuesday or Wednesday.

See you soon and thank you. Have a great weekend.

PM

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This is killing me

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Brilliant and beautiful, as always. Thank you for blessing our timelines🙏

The New Avengers - Swimsuit Special - (2025)

My tribute to the iconic Marvel Swimsuit Special from the 90s, featuring The Thunderbolts The New Avengers Z, Yelena, Bucky, Alpine, Alexei, John, Ava and Bob 🥳

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More Thunderbolts Musings...

I see new things and get new ideas every time I watch Thunderbolts. I’d honestly sit there and take notes the whole time, but I don’t want my phone screen to distract or piss off other people at the theatre. 

Here are some not-so-deep thoughts from this week:

First of all, this is so fucking obvious in hindsight, and I’m sure comic fans knew this from the start, and probably a lot of other people have thought of this, but. Sentry is supposed to have the power of a thousand exploding suns (I think in the comics it’s 10k, which is clearly overkill). Now I know from taking an astronomy class that there are a few things that can happen when a star goes supernova, but what’s the one thing everyone knows can happen?

A black hole. The Void is the other side of Sentry because of his exploding sun powers. Duh. I feel so dumb. And black holes don’t just hang out and be dark, they pull everything toward them. 

2) Amongst all the Soviet memorabilia in Alexei’s shitty apartment, there is a poster of a classic Harley on his wall (right behind his couch, in fact). Is it possible he was a Winter Soldier fanboy back in the day? As a child? He’s certainly Bucky’s biggest fan among the group; how far back does it go? In their What If… episode (What if Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier - watch it right now, you will not regret it), Red Guardian knows a lot about Winter Soldier for someone who’s just another Soviet!Hydra agent. I…feel like I could really sell this in fanfic. And I probably will. Like, when the Soviets got hold of Winter Soldier, did they ever try to parade him out as a state-sponsored superhero? Are there Winter Soldier toys for kids somewhere? I have so many questions. If they did try, clearly it backfired horribly. That could have been why they tried again with Red Guardian. 

3) On a related note, we know there is cut footage of Bucky and Alexei talking in the van (I’m still mad they cut out the part where Bucky’s screaming as they crash into the building -  that’s funny as hell), and I feel like they did a lot more/spent a lot more time bonding than we are shown in the film. We know Alexei is eager to be friends with Bucky and have Bucky recognize him as a hero and a valuable asset (fanboy), but something changes between them (or maybe re-emerges from the “good old days”?) because Bucky is protective of Alexei after that, where he was pretty much ignoring him up to that point (more protective than he is of anyone but Bob). When Alexei breaks down and tries to chase Yelena into the Void, it’s Bucky who grabs him and physically pulls him back to safety. John could just as easily have done it, but he doesn’t. We see someone else grab for Alexei’s arm in that scene–I think it’s probably Ava–but not enough to be of help. I want to think about that more. It’s giving me ideas. 

4) Speaking of Ava, she does seem to be sort of the Velma of the group. She’s the one who insists on trying, that Yelena could be rescued from the Void. And she plays grown-up brain for the team more than once in the film.

5) This watch-through I realized what Bucky’s emotional connection to Bob is. I should have figured it out sooner, but I do plan to explore and exploit that in more fanfiction. 

6) And speaking of connections, I’m sure I don’t have to tell any VoidWalker fans out there, but it is John who gets into the hug second after Yelena. More significantly, he is the one who grabs Bob’s arm and pins it so that he can’t punch himself anymore. Yelena is just hugging him for support, letting him know he’s not alone, but John is the first one who’s like, "we need to pull these two guys apart or else." (Though Bucky is the first one to realize and say "this isn't right" about the way Bob has chosen to deal with the Void.) Additionally, John's grabbing Bob's arm is a physical expression of "please stop hurting yourself," which is an equally important mental health lesson to the film's message. I noticed that several viewings ago, but what I noticed this time was that, in addition to grabbing his arm, John is calling out to Bob repeatedly. You can’t hear it, but you can see his lips moving, yelling, “Bobby!” to try to get him to stop. It’s pretty awesome.

7) Yelena fully surrenders four times in the film. At first, I thought it was a self-harm instinct, as we initially see her do it when she steps off the Merdeka 118. She does it again in the vault, when there are less than five seconds before the incinerator blast happens, just before Ava opens the door. And she does it for the third time right before she steps into the Void. But I would argue that, though some of these things seem pretty end of life-ing, it may be more meditative. More of a self-reliance in the face of awful shit-type thing. Because she does it for the last time at the press conference, after she tells Val that they own her. Like she knows this is going to be fucking hard and full of bullshit, but here she is. She can deal with it.  

Bonus Rant: Also? Just a brief response to a couple of nerd article writers who I read early after the Thunderbolts release. They were going off about how Bucky would never agree to work for Val, she’s evil, she experimented on people, this is not believable because he knows how bad she is and Yelena knows how bad she is, and he has a respectable political career to uphold. 

Dude. Read the fucking comics. Bucky is The Revolution now. Bucky has always had a higher purpose of his own, and since he got free of his programming, he has always upheld it no matter who he was working for. Are you trying to say that SHIELD and Nick Fury are less evil people to be working for than Val? Or the corrupt U.S. government that used to send teenage Bucky on shadow-ops to do the dirty work Steve couldn’t be seen doing? The same government that was trying to keep Sam on a leash in Cap 4? Give me a break. Bucky is a realist, he knows terrible people pull the strings no matter where you go, but it’s what you do and how you do it that matters, not who bankrolls you. If Val tries to give them an order he doesn’t like, I promise you Bucky will have no problem telling her to go fuck herself. And neither will ANY of the New Avengers…except maybe Bob. But he’ll ultimately do what the others do.

That’s it for this week! See you next time…

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Alexei and John totally gave up after they couldn’t finish an entire sweater in 10 minutes

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May I interest you in a new Marvel series devoted to The Thunderbolts The New Avengers ?

About three years ago, I paid tribute to the famous "Marvel Swimsuit Special" by drawing the Avengers (and more) at the beach, all sporting beautiful swimsuits. Let's do it again this year with Yelena, Bucky, Bob and the rest of the team. 🥳

Posting: this Saturday, June 7th at around 7:00pm Paris time. It will be like the summer before the summer. Enjoy and see you on Saturday 💗

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Endgame who?

Watching this terrible film frame by frame for fic reasons, and my golly. The continuity guy seems to have taken a weeks-long smoke break. Heroes are in different places every time the camera angle changes. But I never noticed this before:

Tony and Bucky are like. Seven feet apart, max. That's very interesting. And not at all where they were standing in the last shot (in fact, Tony wasn't even standing).

Continue your smoke break, my guy, with my compliments.

Edit: Tumblr staff AI, you think this requires a mature content label? Are you also agreeing that this was a terrible movie? Thank you.

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Sir Ian McKellen to open historic all-trans and non-binary production of Shakespeare classic

Sir Ian McKellen (Getty)

Sir Ian McKellen will open a brand new production of the Shakespeare classic Twelfth Night featuring all trans and non-binary performers.

The Lord of the Rings star, 86, will join in on the one-night only rehearsed reading by the theatre group Trans What You Will in July.

Staged at London’s The Space Theatre, the reading will be broadcast globally via a livestream. All profits are going to the UK-based trans charity, Not A Phase.

The performance will take one of Shakespeare’s most well known and gender-fluid works and reimagine it through a trans lens.

“With mistaken identities, cross-dressing, and declarations of love across shifting gender roles, Twelfth Night has long explored the complexity of identity,” a press release reads.

“This production makes that queerness explicit, reclaiming the story through the lived experiences of trans and nonbinary artists.”

Sir Ian McKellen (Getty)

Phoebe Kemp, who is directing, has said: “Twelfth Night already toys with gender and performance, it feels like Shakespeare wrote it for us. This reading is about joy, solidarity and showing what’s possible when trans and nonbinary artists are at the centre of the story.”

The performance, which will take place ahead of London Trans+ Pride, has also been billed as “a joyful act of protest and pleasure activism, celebrating gender diversity at a time when trans representation remains under threat.:

Twelfth Night – A Rehearsed Reading by Trans What You Will is set to take place on 25 July 2025 at The Space Theatre. Tickets to attend in person are available here. Tickets for the livestream are available here. Pay-what-you-can tickets are available.

-- Pay-what-you-can livestream?! I love you, Sir Ian!

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BUCKY BARNES » THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

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Some late night Thunderbolts musings

So there’s something that’s kind of been nagging at me since I first saw Thunderbolts, and I think I’ve finally put my finger on it.

The relationship that “the world” has with Bucky by the time we get to Thunderbolts is really interesting. It started for me with the way the other Thunderbolts respond to him when he comes riding to their rescue(?) in the second act. They are not only fangirling(personing) him–which happens in the limo–but they also speak to him as if he’s someone they know personally, as if they have a pre-established relationship with him. And apart from Walker, that’s not true. 

Here is why that’s weird, and also pretty cool: these characters–and I would argue the 616 public as a whole–have a parasocial relationship with Bucky after his revelation in Civil War that creates an unearned affection, protectiveness, and admiration which we as the audience also share. It’s very meta, but it also serves to make us more invested in the storyline. 

I saw a comment–probably in some article–where the writer was questioning why Brooklyn would elect Bucky, a former terrorist and Hydra agent of decades, to be their representative in Congress. For starters, whoever wrote that clearly does not know New Yorkers. But also, I feel the answer is really simple, as demonstrated in Thunderbolts. The general public has a significant parasocial relationship with Bucky, just through what is known of his story: the fact he was Cap’s best friend and loyal sidekick before the dark times, and the way he came back from a lifetime of trauma to try to make a difference. 

It’s really interesting, though, that the Thunderbolts–who are already super relatable characters–also have this parasocial relationship with Bucky. They talk to him as if he’s their stubborn uncle, unquestioningly take his direction and accept his leadership (even though he doesn’t necessarily know what to do with that). Bucky’s used to being a lone operative, for the most part, not a team leader (though he does notably lead the strike team in the highway sequence of Winter Soldier).

We see a similar familiarity in the way that Mel interacts with Bucky. There’s little respect when he first approaches her–as if she already knows him–and when she asks for help, there’s this immediate assumption that this total stranger–who is retired as a superhero–is going to immediately come to her rescue. The way she talks to him is akin to calling your uncle to bail you out of jail or something. It’s interesting. A false intimacy created by the parasocial relationship this young woman has with a guy who was probably in cryo during the Battle of New York, when she was in high school. 

Going even beyond that, the Thunderbolts are super protective of Bucky. When Sentry knocks him out at the end of the tower fight, Alexei and John pick up Bucky's unconscious body and run for the elevator–Ava has already grabbed his vibranium arm. And inside the elevator, they prop him behind everyone, shielding a guy who is arguably the most durable person on the team with their squishy punch-and-shoot-only bodies. That’s love. Where does it come from? They’ve barely spent 4 hours with this man. It’s that parasocial relationship again. Like the audience, they have this unearned bond with him. 

And to his credit, like your favorite celebrity who has never met you, Bucky doesn’t quite know what to do with it. At the same time, he does feel responsible for them, having dragged them into his mission. And the relationship builds from there. 

Marvel hasn’t played seriously with this idea of parasocial relationships before. We see it a little bit in the Ironman movies, because Tony is such a big celebrity, but not to this extent, where it’s a cast of main characters having this kind of significant parasocial relationship with another main character. They are the fans and so are we. They are flawed and so are we. They persevere and save the day through the power of friendship and so can we.

I love these guys. Disney better not harm a hair on any of their heads in Doomsday. 

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Family, friends, deadly assassins...

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New Avengers Tower fanfiction

Hey, remember when I used to write MCU stuff? I'm doing it again.

Summary: When Bucky tries to convince Bob that sleep is a good thing, it quickly turns into a team slumber party.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65494603

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hes sooooooooo foine

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It's Bucky! 🦾